Old Hungarian small letter u

It represents the vowel u in an Old Hungarian spelling. The script, also called Székely rovás, records Hungarian words and is normally read from right to left. The medieval form of U is linked to an earlier v-shaped sign; Latin u/v spelling may have influenced the distinction, but the exact transition is uncertain.

The surviving record is fragmentary. The script's earliest historical use is placed in the 13th century, while the Vargyas church stone is probably a 12th-century carving that points to an older tradition and quotes the Gospel. U appears in the 15th-century Nikolsburg alphabet, a list of letters. The script's ancestry is debated; proposals include Old Turkic contact or borrowing, followed by Greek, Slavic, and Latin influences.

Why can this letter carry political associations?

The wider inscription and setting matter more than one letter. By itself, 𐳪 is an alphabetic character; a word or public sign in the script can signal Székely or Hungarian heritage.

As of 2024, research on public signs documented both nationalist uses and criticism of treating the script itself as nationalist. Readers may recognize those identity associations differently. Old Hungarian is not a Germanic rune: visual resemblance to Futhark does not establish a historical link.